


All Over But the Shouting (Never Mind)

by serialkarma



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 12:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serialkarma/pseuds/serialkarma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this was originally intended to be a Five Things story, about Stella and Ray. I only got through four things, though, and then sort of ran out of steam. The fifth was going to be about Fraser and Ray, and Stella seeing them together, and it was supposed to tie up in a neat little bow all the things that Stella had spent the last four sections not telling herself. But I could never really get a handle on it, and so it languished, in handwritten notes, at the bottom of a junk drawer, until I suddenly got the urge to do something with it this morning. </p>
<p>(this morning = 2006, fyi)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Over But the Shouting (Never Mind)

**1.**  
  
Ray’s skin always feels warm under Stella’s hands. He complains that her hands and feet are always cold, though, and maybe that’s what it is; it’s not so much that Ray is so much warmer than average, but that she is colder. Something about that bothers her, but on nights like this one, when she comes to bed hours after him, and she slides between sheets warmed by his body--puts her cold feet against his calves and her cold hands against his back, buries her cold nose in the back of his neck--she doesn’t care enough to think about it too deeply.   
  
She just snuggles up against him and breathes in the scent of him--sweat and hair gel and the faintest hint of tobacco. The familiar smells are as comforting as the warmth that radiates off him, and tonight he is so deeply asleep he doesn’t even twitch when she burrows her freezing fingertips in between his arm and his side.  
  
So maybe she’s colder than average. Ray burns hotter, too hot sometimes. She figures that’s why they belong together. It evens out, in the end.  
  
  
 **2.**  
  
Ray thinks Stella doesn’t notice the cigarettes.  
  
But of course she does--there’s only so much you can hide from the person you sleep next to, not to mention the person who does your laundry. She can smell it in his hair at night when he rolls closer to her in his sleep, and she can smell it in the folds of his black leather jacket when she picks it up to hang in the closet.  
  
To be fair, he tries to be good about it. He knows she doesn’t like it in the apartment, and she’s never found an empty pack in the trash or a butt out on the balcony.   
  
So if she occasionally notices the residue of smoke when she’s in his car, she doesn’t say anything about it.  
  
Everyone has a secret or two.  
  
  
 **3.**    
  
For their fifth anniversary they go to the Caribbean. It’s supposed to be the honeymoon they couldn’t afford when they got married--Ray had just finished his probationary period on the force, and she’d been in the middle of her first clerkship for Judge Howard. They’d gotten married over Memorial Day weekend, and rented a cabin the woods in Michigan. They’d stayed in bed the entire two days, and when they weren’t making love they were planning out the  _real_ honeymoon, the one they’d take as soon as Stella made associate in a law firm and Ray’d made it out of Patrol and onto an investigative unit.  
  
And now here they are, five years later. Stella’s a rising star at the State’s Attorney’s office and Ray’s just been promoted to Detective (Third Grade). So once all the talk about the Botrelle case has died down, they take a week. ("I just can’t do two, Ray, I wish I could. But the Luther case is going to trial at the end of June and the SA really needs me to be there for preliminary phases.") They get a beachfront bungalow on a private beach in Aruba.  
  
And Ray hates it.  
  
Stella thinks it’s like he’s determined not to like anything, no matter what. It’s too hot, it’s too bright, it’s too  _tropical_.   
  
“I’m not really a tropical kind of guy, Stell. Give me a cabin in the woods by the lake, any day.”  
  
“Ray, you haven’t been to a cabin in the woods since we got married.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, but that was nice, that was really nice, I liked that.”  
  
“You realize you also hardly went  _outside_  that weekend, right Ray?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. I remember. Maybe we should try that here, huh? Why don’t you come over here?”  
  
“Oh, Ray.”  
  
If it’s not the weather it’s the crowds.  
  
“Too many people, jeez, how can you stand all the people, Stella? I can’t breathe.”  
  
“This is a private beach, Ray. There are maybe twenty other people out here. Besides, you live in the middle of Chicago. You’re surrounded by millions of people every day, and I don’t hear you complaining.”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s different.”  
  
“Really? How?”  
  
“I don’t know, I don’t know! It just... _is_ , that’s all.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
If it’s not the people, it’s the food.  
  
“I never thought I’d miss kielbasa, but I’d kill for one right now. What is this, a  _banana_  on my burger?”  
  
“It’s a plantain.”  
  
“It looks like a banana.”  
  
“Well, it’s like a banana, but it’s not as sweet.”  
  
“Close enough, who puts bananas on a hamburger?”  
  
“ _You_  put pineapple on pizza!”  
  
“That’s different.”  
  
“Oh for God’s sake, Ray, is there  _anything_  about this place you like?”  
  
He leers.  
  
“I like the way you looked in that bikini this afternoon. And I kinda dig this music. C’mon, let’s dance.”  
  
So Ray likes her bikini and the steel drums. It could have been worse, she supposes.   
  
For his birthday that September she rents a cabin on Lake Michigan for the weekend. It rains for three days straight and they spend the entire time in bed. They both agree it’s the best vacation they’ve ever had.  
  
  
 **4.**  
  
Stella understands that in every marriage there are things you don’t talk about. Sometimes you can’t, if you want the marriage to work. So you don’t talk about it, and that’s how everything works.  
  
Like, for instance, the way her mother and stepfather don’t talk about her mother’s drinking. It’s not an issue, because they don’t make it one. Her mother isn’t a _drunk_  after all, she doesn’t get sick, or embarrass herself in front of anyone. So if she sometimes smells like vodka and juice at lunch, well. It’s not really a problem and there’s no point in making it one, so why talk about it?  
  
And so there are some things Stella doesn’t talk to Ray about. She doesn’t talk about how sometimes when they’re out shopping, or eating, or dancing, his eyes follow someone walking by, and it’s not a cop stare, and sometimes it’s not even a woman.   
  
She doesn’t mention how the first month he was working with Sam Franklin he’d come home every night with his eyes sparkling and a bounce in his step. She doesn’t mention how for that whole month every other sentence started with, “Sam said  _this_ ” or “Sam did  _that_ ” and she very carefully does not mention how she thinks she might hate Sam Franklin.   
  
She never, ever mentions the night Ray didn't come home and didn't call. She’d spent the night tossing and turning, waking up every hour, reminding herself that he was a  _cop_  and she was a cop’s  _wife_  and this was the way it was going to be sometimes, and she’d just been lucky that until now he’d always managed to call. It was just once, it didn’t mean anything was wrong, get  _over_  it, Stella.   
  
So when he’d stumbled into the bedroom at 5:30, muttering something incomprehensible and heading straight for the shower, she hadn’t said anything but “I’m glad you’re all right.”  
  
And when the next morning she’d picked up his clothes, forgotten on the bathroom floor, and noticed a smell like sex, but…different, somehow, she hadn’t said anything about that either, and she never will.


End file.
